Javier Bardem on Playing a 007 Villain: “It was a great gift of finding myself in a very, very creative process”

It’s not often that such an acclaimed actor as Javier Bardem stars as the villain in a James Bond movie, which is perhaps one of the reasons why Skyfall is the most critically praised 007 films in the series’ fifty-year history. Bardem tells Yahoo! News what he brought to the role that was different than previous Bond villains, and makes a surprising revelation about how he trains as an actor.

Bardem admits one of his goals was for his character to threaten Bond by trying to get under his skin by simply being uncomfortable. He reveals, “The key point for me was what (director Sam Mendes) told me from the very beginning: the word ‘uncomfortableness. I don’t want him to be someone that threatens somebody, that’s threatening to someone. It’s about creating a very uncomfortable situation every time he talks to somebody else.”

Bardem, who is used to doing much lower-budget films, was surprised at how much creativity he found in staring in a film series’ twenty-third entry. He says, “I’ve never done a movie as big as James Bond, so I didn’t how a big monster like this would affect my work on set. It was a great gift of finding myself in a very, very creative process.”

Perhaps even more surprisingly, despite being an Oscar winner Bardem reveals that he spends a month each year with his acting coach. As for why he does this, he says, “It’s always about really dismantling what you think you know and the security and the safety zone where you are, trying to make a step forward to something new, something that will put you in some trouble.”